Review: The Wind-Up Birds – We Fixed The Raffle: The Post War Years

Rather like rugby league, it’s hard to imagine there’s much of a market for The Wind-Up Birds outside their Northern England base. This is a band who take great pains to explain where they’re from. ‘We Fixed the Raffle’ is the seventh release from the Leeds quartet although this has yet to include a full album. Still, their mixture of Northern rabble-rousing shows no sign of letting up and these eight songs rank amongst their best work.

Set to a thrilling Jam-like riff, ‘The Craze That Never Caught On’ and ‘What’s For Dinner’ sound like they’ve been performed by a bunch of football hooligans, complete with thuggish chanting but The Wind-Up Birds are far more articulate than they appear on the surface. ”There Won’t Always Be An England’, for example, documents the shame of not being brave enough to disagree with a rascist bigot and the title track slows the pace down to fit in some Pavement-esque guitar work.

Musically, this is no great development for The Wind-Up Birds but then they were only recorded this EP a short time after their last release. It is better to respect them for their punk-fuelled anthems which offer the kind of angry, political fare that makes you thankful for a recession.

Web Sites:
The Wind-Up Birds Official Site
The Wind-Up Birds MySpace

Further Listening:
The Jam, The Arctic Monkeys, The Buzzcocks